China Root: Taoism, Ch'an, and Original Zen

A literary meditation on Taoism and the origins of Zen by renowned translator and author David Hinton.

When Buddhism arrived in China during the first century of the current era, it was fundamentally reinterpreted and reshaped by Taoist thought, its more abstract metaphysical sensibility becoming grounded in an earthly and empirically based vision. What resulted was Ch'an Buddhism--the precursor to Zen as it would later appear in Japan, other Asian countries, and the West. In this fascinating volume, David Hinton renders a beautiful deep-literary analysis of early Ch'an to recover aspects of the tradition lost in its transmission from China to Japan and in the later spread of the teachings to Europe and the Americas. Each chapter explores a core Zen concept--such as meditation, mind, Tao, or Buddha--as it was originally understood in China. Organized as a straightforward handbook, China Root illuminates the most critical aspects of the original Zen philosophy and practice, including emptiness, koans, language skepticism, and everyday mind. Taking this journey on the wings of Hinton's remarkable insight and powerful writing, contemporary Zen practitioners will never see the conceptual framework of their practice in the same way again.